I’m not generally one to dance on people’s political graves. Without question, Norby had real accomplishments in the legislature — some of which involved opposing much of his own party, as with the scuttling of redevelopment. He was an ideologue in both the best and worst senses — willing to take on anyone in support of his beliefs, but also so committed to them as to be immune to contrary evidence.

Norby lost to a better and more dedicated candidate who started out with great support from her community and from her mentor, Loretta Sanchez, and jumped through every hoop necessary to get the state Democratic Party and unions to — finally and almost too late — jump into the race with both feet wearing cleats.

Quirk-Silva won’t have the advantage of surprise in two years — but she also won’t so badly need it. She’ll be able to raise gobs of money now so that she can hold onto the seat. That money will have to be used to cement in a larger transformation — one that can survive an election where President Obama, Prop 30, and Prop 32 are not the main concerns. Just as Loretta Sanchez has been the “go-to person” in central OC, she will become the same in the northwest — a significant party leader and organizer from Stanton and Cypress up to Fullerton and Buena Park. Both a long-planned voter registration campaign in West Anaheim and Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decision to allow online voter registration played significant roles in the win. Quirk-Silva had a strong, professionally led staff, a thick hide in the fact of attacks, and tremendous discipline. She’ll now have the advantage in Sacramento of being the rock star who brought home the unexpected victory.

As Loretta Sanchez has done for her, Quirk-Silva will have to groom her own successors should she decide to run for State Senate in four years — or for Congress if Jay Chen doesn’t beat Ed Royce before then. (Note: I don’t need a disclaimer here; I don’t expect or especially want to be among those successors Apparently, I’m a little polarizing.) The Republican bench in the area is deeper than the Democratic one, which will mean a lot of effort towards party building in order to catch up — La Palma’s Ralph Rodriguez is one example of someone that people might want to start being nice to right now — and for Democrats, that’s all to the good. She’ll probably (but not necessarily) face a strong challenge in 2014 — “what’s Shaun Nelson running for?” is already becoming a local parlor game — but if she survives it strongly enough she’ll probably be in the clear thereafter.

It’s a heady time here in the region. This was not “just another election”; it was the local version of a 1932 or 1968-style realignment. A lot — including the broader success of the regional party — will rest on Quirk-Silva’s shoulders. That’s OK, though — she’s battle-tested. She’s dealt with both Kelly’s Army and with an army of elementary school students. Which experience will prove to have been more useful in Sacramento — well, that’s the punch line to a joke that she’s earned the right to complete whichever way she wants.

About Greg Diamond

Prolix worker's rights and government accountability attorney and General Counsel of CATER. His anti-corruption work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, leading them to work with the Democratic Party of Orange County Chair and other co-conspirators (who had long detested the internal oversight his presence provided) to remove him from the position of DPOC North Vice Chair of in violation of party rules and any semblance of due process. He also runs for office sometimes.
Unless otherwise specifically stated, none of his writings prior to that lawless putsch ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level. He tries to either suppress or openly acknowledge his partisan, issue, ideological, and "good government" biases in most of his writing here. If you have a question about any particular writing, just ask him about it and (unless you are an pseudonymous troll) he will probably answer you at painful length.
He lives in Beautiful Bountiful Brea, but while he may brag about it he generally doesn't blog about it. A family member works as a campaign treasurer for candidates including Wendy Gabriella in AD-73; he doesn't directly profit from that relatively small compensation and it doesn't affect his coverage. He does advise some campaigns informally and (except where noted) without compensation.

12 Comments

Though I am a staunch conservative, I also share your joy of dancing on Chris Norby’s grave. The pending tax increases with a Democratic super majority do not excite me.

Nonetheless, here is a little history about Chris Norby. He was an obscure Fullerton politician recruited by desperate and dishonest South Orange County Anti El Toro Airport NIMBYs to hijack the Orange County Board of Supervisors and do their bidding. (Never mind that the public had already voted for the airport twice!)

Norby’s sole mission as a supervisor was to blindly vote to hand over El Toro to the City of Irvine with no questions asked and no strings attached. Never mind, that every single city in Norby’s district soundly defeated the phony “Great Park” measure. Since he got 80% of his donations from South County denizens, his loyalty was only to them, not his new constituents. He could care less about creating jobs for his constituents.(El Toro Airport would have created 100,000 direct and indirect jobs.) Perhaps that is why he now is out of a job. He can now feel what his angry constituents have felt for years.

The result of blindly handing over El Toro over to Larry Agran (who just lost his bid for Irvine mayor) and his cabal is there is no job creating airport that is crowd free and close to home. The only jobs this alleged “park” has created are for the likes of no bid contracts for Larry’s friends like Forde and Mollrich.

Myopic South Orange County NIMBYs did not just kill a chance for economic stimulus and air transportation improvements for Orange County, they have also infected the entire state of California with the norby.exe virus they created. They picked a RINO who had a lot of questionable character flaws. Sure enough he was vulnerable to eventually being picked off by tax hungry Democrats, which just happened. Thanks to South County puppet RINO Chris Norby losing what was a very safe Republican assembly seat and being the last line of defense against tax hungry Democrats, they now have a super majority for non-stop tax increases. Even if Jerry Brown tries to show some rare fiscal prudence, his vetoes will be overridden by Democrat assembly with absolutely no checks on their power.

In addition, Prop 30 has passed and more tax hikes are on the way. Most of them won’t be paying the excessive taxes coming to Taxifornia, the job creators will. Do expect an exodus of job creators to more tax friendly states like Texas, Florida, and Nevada which have no personal income tax.

With California becoming a third world country with high taxes, high regulations, high traffic, high density, airport overcrowding, low production, and low job creation, the source of our problems can be found with the norby.exe virus that South Orange County created. Thanks to their virus, they have weakened the financial immune system of California. A legitimate Republican would have been able to hold that seat and would have been a bulwark to out of control taxes and spending.

1. I’m glad I was still in Texas during that El Toro Airport debate of the early 90’s. I’m not sure what side I would have been on, but I can see that the bitterness over it has lasted a long time.

2. I wouldn’t be overly worried about the Democratic supermajority raising taxes any time soon. For one thing it won’t really be a supermajority for at least another year, as two of our current Senators are moving up to Congress and will have to be replaced in special elections early next year, after which the assemblymen who’ll probably replace them will have to be replaced themselves probably in Nov. ’13. And maybe you’ll be able to get one of your guys into one of those slots. But even if not, Jerry Brown will veto any tax hikes, AND the legislature has several anti-tax Dems. Add to that, the fact that they say they don’t intend to, for what that’s worth.

Oh, but if you’re talking about an oil extraction tax, or a closing of some corporate loopholes, I sure hope they go for that! And hopefully get some Republican help.

*Having been in the middle of the El Toro fight…..living here in the safety of the flight pattern of JWA…..at the time……we can tell you – If you have seen the plans for the International Airport in El Toro…..at the county level……your various gasps of horror and visions of LAX/La Guardia/JFK Airports all come to mind. It was strictly a Irvine Company/Grand Design of idiots concept. To be done on the cheap with 1000’s of residential homes added around the airport land they couldn’t use for flight operations or mega-transportation centers.

We were on the Bill Krogerman side of the debate. What needed to happen was to move all the General Aircraft and Support Facilities to a very downsized El Toro Regional airport. JWA would have then been strictly dedicated to solely Commercial Flight Operations…..with the number of flights being reduced by well over 50% of the existing numbers at the time.

What this would have accomplished would have been the best of both worlds for both communities. Limited exposure for Irvine and reduced flights from John Wayne. The Traffic Circulation plans would have required expanded Freeway lanes for operational free-flow. The old idea was create Regional Flights….much like Long Beach Airport out of the proposed El Toro…to places like Las Vegas, San Jose, LAX and San Diego.or Palm Springs.

Norby did the right thing initially, but was forced into the Great Park Idea because of the huberous of Big Larry of Irvine. The bad news is that Newport Beach suffered due to the increased flight loads and passenger counts and with the expansion now into International Flights…..Elvis has left the building…

*We forgot to mention that a proposed direct commuter monorail would have run from JWA to El Toro Airport and return. The circulation would have been seemless, affordable and very efficient. You might want to look and see which folks were on the Board of Supervisors in 1994 for your questions asking: Why didn’t that happen?

Is that you, Don Nyre? No matter, you Newport Beach NIMBYs are all the same.

I was intimately involved in the El Toro fight for its duration, El Toro was a ridiculous, cynical pipe dream designed solely to alleviate Newport Beach hypocrites of the scourge of JWA, who were at the same time assuring would-be victims of a (non-curfewed, 24-hour a day operations) El Toro what a good neighbor an airport would be. It’s hypocrisy on a scale that makes Chevron’s fake Fulleron “nature preserve” seem like an inconsequential little fib.

On Norby, defeating that empty-headed troll Coad and her oaf husband/svengali and aiding the victory on El Toro may have been the only worthwhile thing that bum ever did.

*No dude…you…..and don’t forget floss…afterward! Try reading the entire post before you go off and act like a complete nerd-ball.

By the way, YOU were intimately involved…with who? What are you the
Mayor of Laguna Hills? You sound more like a Irvine Company employee
to me……”Monday Morning Quarterback”…. “I was there!” Yep….sounds
good to us.

The reason that Vern does not know what side that he would be on is obvious!
The person writing as “Vernon Delights” is obviously a political hack with an Agenda.
(I hope that is not you GREG!)
An Airport Lobbying Group isn’t anymore innocent than a Great Park Lobbying group!
whores.

Thank you Assemblyman Chris Norby. A result of the recent redistricting is our loss of a true champion of the people. Chris Norby. Assemblyman Chris Norby will go down in California history for spearheading the demise of our 425 redevelopment agencies. Thank you Chris for the good fight. You are going down as a winner in terms of protecting the small guy in our state and beyond. Having watched numerous Assembly and Senate members serving in CA few have achieved such a remarkable achievement. Back in 1993/94 Assemblyman Philip Eisenberg championed a partial fix (AB 1206) to our Housing and Community development redevelopment law. In 2006, after we jointly testified at a joint hearing in San Diego, SD Senator Christine Kehoe heard our plea and championed SB 1206 in her effort to better define the much abused redevelopment criteria where we tried to create a standard yardstick for all of the CA agencies.This past year Chris lobbied governor Brown to reject the recent legislation that was heavily promoted by special interests in our state.

In 2006, while serving on the County Board of Supervisors, Chris championed approval of Measure A stopping the county from abusing their eminent domain police powers. It passed with a 76% approval.

Proclamations issued to local citizens presented at city council meetings by members of staff, while probably deserved, do not rise to the level of Chris Norby’s fight to protect the private property rights of thousands of California homeowners, many of whom he never met regardless of political party. Chris did not have a litmus test for those we defended. To be truthful, the majority of eminent domain and redevelopment agency victims are the poor and the minority, most of which are Democrats.

I watched as Chris lobbied long and hard to get the deciding vote last year from a fellow Republican to shut down these leaches lined up at our public troths as the “special interest” share of local tax increment took much needed funding away from school, police and fire services.

One of our memorable joint efforts with Chris was in 2006 protesting a $400 million dollar redevelopment project in Hollywood at Highland and Vine Streets where Democrat Bob Blue’s family luggage store was being taken by the CRA/LA under their police power. Our protest, covered by the media, led to a compromise by the city in which Bob prevailed. Surrounding Bernard Luggage is now a W hotel and apartments.

During Chris’s multiple MORR/CURE conferences he had numerous speakers presenting information on this complex, yet for many, painful topic. He created the RUG, acronym for his booklet entitled “Redevelopment: The Unknown Government” in which over 75,000 were printed and distributed during 9 updated editions.

Some of his guest MORR/CURE conference speakers over the past 15 years included representatives of both political parties, several property rights attorney’s and victims. Without listing them all: